Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/2/25 Kyle Anzalone on the Unending Nightmare in Gaza

Episode Date: May 4, 2025

Kyle Anzalone joins the show again to go over all the latest developments related to Gaza. They start with the aid ships in the Mediterranean en route to Gaza that appear to have been attacked by a drone. They then take a broader look at the state of things in the strip, take stock of the ongoing level of US support for Israel’s campaign, piece together Israel’s plans for the people of Gaza, reflect on what happened to the ceasefire deal and more.    Discussed on the show: “Smotrich: Israel Will Stop Fighting Once ‘Hundreds of Thousands’ of Palestinians Are Removed from Gaza” (Antiwar.com) “Israeli Soldiers in Gaza Used 80-Year-Old as Human Shield Before Killing Him and His Wife” (Antiwar.com) Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com, co-host of Conflicts of Interest and host of The Kyle Anzalone Show. Follow him on Twitter @KyleAnzalone_ This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated; Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Sign up for the podcast feed at Scotthorton.org or Scott Horton Show.com. I've got more than 6,000 interviews in the archive. for you there going back to 2003 and follow me on all the video sites and x at scott horton show hey you guys guess what on the line i got kyle anselone again of course you know that he is the news editor at the institute libertarian institute dot org and he is the opinion editor at

antiwar dot com and uh also he hosts two shows one of them is called the kyle anzelian show and the other one is called Conflicts of Interest, which he co-hosts with Connor Freeman a lot of the time. Anyway, hey, welcome back. How are you doing? Doing well, Scott. Thanks for having me back on. Cool. Happy to have you here. You know what I don't know a lot about is what's going on in Gaza lately. So I was hoping you could help us catch up. Yes, Scott. Well, I guess probably the biggest news related to Gaza this morning isn't happening in Gaza. It's happening off the coast of Malta. Another freedom flow tiller was put together that was going to try to bring aid into the starving people in Gaza as the strip has been under a two-month Israeli siege now blocking all food, aid, medicine from entering the strip.

So think about 30 brave people boarded a ship in Malta and just as they were off the coast, their ship was hit with at least one, maybe two drones that disabled the ship in required them to call for a rescue. I guess the ship was going to pick up, but they were not yet aboard both retired coloneled and Wright, who, of course, has done a lot of good work over the years, and we've republished their stuff at anti-war.com. And also, what's their name, Thornburg, I think the activist, the climate change activist, was also supposed to be on this freedom flotilla at some point,

although they weren't when it was hit. So that ship was disabled, and everybody's looking at Israel, real Scott, this definitely seems like it would be something they would do. They, in 2010, actually carried out an attack on another freedom flow till a ship and killed 10 people in that attack. Yeah, including an American citizen named for Kandogan. And yeah, and I think Ray McGovern was on the boat that time, too.

Forget if that, there's been a couple of these in the past. But I don't understand because I know Anne Wright. She's been on the show once or twice. a decent person. I can't understand why she'd be paling around with terrorists to sneak on a boat into the Gaza Strip, Kyle. So is there potentially another explanation for what was actually going on outside of, you know, the Israelis narrative? I don't think, Scott, I think the Israelis are just at this point convinced that at least they could convince the U.S. that anybody who does anything they don't like is Hamas are supporting Hamas. And that's how they're going to

going to control the narrative. Just this week at the International Court of Justice, the World Court, they're hearing a bunch of arguments and statements from different countries on what rights do the Palestinians basically have. What does Israel have to give the Palestinian people since they're under military occupation? You know, this guy, of course, me and you are libertarians. We want to say that one country has an obligation to another. But in the case, particularly of Gaza, these people are locked down by the Israelis.

They are not allowed to leave. They cannot bring food and medicine in. Their children are undergoing amputations without anesthesia. And so they are under a complete military occupation. And so countries are arguing that Israel is at least obliged to allow the United Nations, third countries, and other international aid organizations to come into and to bring aid into Gaza to make sure that nobody ends up, you know, starving to death. But, of course, the Israelis are refusing this, and the U.S. is arguing that Israel does have that right

because UNRWA and other international aid organizations have ties to Hamas, and any food we bring into Gaza is just going to help Hamas. What is UNR anyway? Is that a terrorist organization? Well, that's the UN aid agency for Palestinians. It's been around for a number of decades. I guess, I think, since 67, the UN formed it. And anyways, this is supposed to help the Palestinian refugee. Jesus, they've been deplaced with the creation of the state of Israel, tens of thousands of

employees, and Scott, Israel has repeated time and time again that UNRWA was crucial in carrying out the October 7th attack. I think evidence has emerged of the thousands of Hamas and other Palestinian militants and criminals who carried out the October 7th. I think they've identified one UNRWA worker who participated in that. And UNRWA's, again, employees, I think they are about the same size as a company of Delta. And so if some Delta employee took part in a riot or something, you wouldn't blame that company for it. And that's the same thing here with Amos.

In fact, the U.S. Day Independent Inquiry was headed by a former French foreign minister that found that Israel was unable to substantiate its allegations that UNRA participated in the October 7th attack or facilitated in any way. So they just told that lie a bunch of times. they're still sticking by it. And that's it. They're just framing it that way. Unra is a terrorist organization. So these guys are associated with that. So their boat full of food is a terrorist plot to not be regarded as any different than a giant truck bomb or something like that, I guess. Well, Scott, it sounds stupid. And it seems that everybody else in the world is waking up to

the Israeli propaganda. But there's some kind of weird dome under Washington, D.C., where they just buy all this and regurgitate it to the American people. I mean, it was just what thinking about six weeks ago that 15 Palestinian Medits, many of whom worked for the Reg Presson or other aid organizations, were on their way to, you know, provide help. You know, they're driving with their lights on, their sirens on, and the Israelis gun them down. And even after the Medits take cover, they're all then killed by the Israeli forces. And then the ambulances and the medits are buried in a mass grave, and it's only because they dug up that grave and they found one of the phones that the Israelis didn't destroy that showed those ambulances driving in formation

with their lights on that, you know, this clearly wasn't a Hamas target. But the Israelis initially claimed it was Hamas, and the Trump administration said, well, it really doesn't matter because if it wasn't for Hamas, Israel wouldn't have done this. And so everything that happens in Gaza, this is the Trump administration's position, everything that happens in Gaza, is Hamas's fault. Yeah, which is the equivalent argument of just the dumbest shill on X, right? They're like, oh, yeah, well, what about October 7th is what made Israel do? What the thing that you're complaining about, you know, is just completely ridiculous.

And just think about if that applied the other way to Israel or to the United States, that, well, Israel's committed all this violence. so therefore it's justified for the Palestinians to do anything to any Israeli civilian? I mean, obviously, when you put it that way, that sounds completely crazy. You know? Huh. Oh, well. So talk about the humanitarian situation more because, you know, back a few years ago,

my argument was, and it's just an argument, a category in my end, or other people's heads, too. They're like, well, I don't know how well-defined this is in law. That's not my job. I'm not a lawyer. But it seems like when America was helping Saudi Arabia and the UAE deliberately inflict a famine on Yemen, well, then that's genocide. What else do you call it when countries are ganging up on another country and deliberately

inflicting a famine on them and, you know, literally bombing their fields and all their irrigation ditches and waging a full-scale naval blockade against the country and shutting out of their airport and all that stuff. So is that the same kind of thing that would apply here? Or not yet or someday? Or hell yeah, man, a year and a half ago at least is when this started? Or what do you think is, what do people need to know about the humanitarian situation in Gaza now?

Yeah, I mean, Sky, you're largely right. A year and half ago, it started. And so for the first 14 months of the Israeli onslaught through January of this year. There was just a trickle of aid getting into Gaza. I think at sometimes it was just over 100 aid trucks a day. Most of the time it was under periods of time, I think it was in the 50s of aid trots a day that were getting into Gaza. And Israel was doing a number of things to, you know, implement this blockade, including it's not even the government, but the settlers, Israelis were just looting the aid trots, setting fire to imagine, Scott,

you know, food going into Gaza, and there's starving children in there, and you stopping that aid truck, throwing the food on the ground and saying it on fire, or knowing that there's babies freezing to death in Gaza, and you're stopping the aid trots with the tents, but this is what the Israelis were doing. Now, January 19th, we had the ceasefire and hostage deal take effect, and a big part of that was Israel was supposed to allow, I believe, about 800 aid trots of aid into Gaza per day, along with some construction equipment, mobile homes, and 200,000 tents. And so they let in just a small portion of the tents. I don't think they let in any of the mobile homes and some of the construction equipment, which my understanding, Israel has since

bombed the construction equipment and just a fraction of the amount of aid trots that they were supposed to let in in that time. But those aid trots coming in allowed for the soup kitchens and aid agencies to start to fill their stop piles a little bit. And so on March 2nd, Israel broke the ceasefire and hostage deal and imposed a full blockade on Gaza. Since March 2nd, no goods, no food, no aid of any kind has entered Gaza. And so now all these aid agencies like UNRWA, like the World Food Program, have distributed all the aid in their stoppiles out.

And so, you know, families have a little bit of food in their tens. soup kitchen style places that, you know, cook large meals and feed people in these tent cities that you now have in Gaza, they're estimated to run out of food in the next few days. About a million Gazans are living on just one meal a day. That includes a lot of children. And of measured children, so not every child is going to the hospital to get checked on, but of those that are, 60,000 have shown signs of malnutrition already.

And, you know, this just has to be the most intolerable thing for all these Palestinian families who have these little kids who are just suffering. But also the lifelong consequences of going malnourished as a child are serious. You know, brain development, stunted growth, more mental health and just other health things down the line. This is a generational punishment that the Israelis are inflicting on the Palestinians right now by denying them food. Yeah, and look back to the specious arguments in favor of all this stuff, so that's all they can be. I mean, here's a situation where half the population is, or even more, are minors, so really they're not minors. They're the majority are under 18 and many, you know, much under 18. And then it's been this way.

And then the excuse for all this is, well, they voted for Hamas, but that was 20 years ago. and back then the majority was under 18 back then too and even then it was just the plurality that voted for hamas not the majority and the only reason they took control full control of the government was because george w bush back to coup d'etat there against them which failed and ended up resulting in them consolidating all of their power over the gaza strip which is you know probably what the israelis intended all along anyway or they sure weren't too disappointed to know that they had the Palestinian authority based on the Fatah party in the West Bank, and they had Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip in these separate territories, separate regimes, Palestinians effectively divided and conquered, and the peace process froze in and formaldehyde forever, as Dov Weiss-glass, Ariel Shron's man put it. so um but just imagine assigning collective responsibility onto a bunch of kids now for what a bunch of kids didn't do back 20 years ago and going yeah well whatever man you're near an armed fighter so

I get to kill you it's just it and near can be defined as anywhere within 10 miles by 25 miles right that's it right an armed fighter could apparently be defined by Israel as what their AI machines turn out, right? We know that they've used these lavender programs to, you know, this, for all the Americans who are worried about the Chinese social credit score system coming to the America, what about the Israeli Hamas credit score system, where even the Israelis in the military who operated these things admitted that they were able to dial up or down certain metrics within the lavender AI program, and suddenly they would generate 10,000, 20,000 new names of Palestinians who are so close to Hamas that we had to support

them. So, you know, it's absolutely embarrassing, I guess, that we support this for so long, Scott. Yeah, seriously. It, you know, it reminds me of people supporting the murdering of all the Branch Divideans. And they knew they were the good guys and the Branch Civilians are bad guys. Hey, that guy said he's Jesus and he's bad to little kids and he's bad. He has illegal weapons said all the right wingers. He's got weapons without a license and paying the proper taxation to Uncle Sam. You know, Bill Clinton. He's got to get that tax revenue. And so we support the FBI and the Delta Force going in there and murdering every last one of those people as soon as possible. That was, by and large, the American people's position at the time, including the average

Texan, and including after it, too, when they stood by it and still said, yeah, the tank of salt was the right thing, even though everybody knows it ended in a fire one way or the other. But it's the same thing here where people come up with any rationalization. They know that they're the heroes. They're on the side of liberty and justice and Superman and Jesus and the USA and the American flag and all of this stuff. They're just killing kids. It's like a complete satanic orgy of, you know, absolute destruction.

I'm sitting and watching a snuff film and enjoying it. And then coming up again with these preposterous cliches about what? Well, that's what you get for supporting Hamas. Hey, they danced in the street when they heard of October 7th and just whatever as a license to murder children with to deliberately starve them. And then this reminds me of a headline that was on anti-war.com, I think yesterday, which was the finance minister, Bezal-Smaltrich, saying, oh, yeah, no, the policy is that we're going to keep doing this until they're all gone. Yeah. And he's been saying it, Scott, you know, as much as this isn't important. headline, and I'm glad Dave covers this. This is the 20th, our 25th headline that he's had of

small church saying, we want all the Palestinians out of Gaza, and if we have to kill him to do it, we're going to kill him to do it. He's even said that basically it was the pressure that would come from the world of watching two million people starve to death is the only thing that actually prevents Israel from starving the two million Palestinians in Gaza to death. He said, be moral and justified for them to do it if they wanted to do it. We also had itmar Ben-Gavir in the U.S. this week, first in Mara Lago and then on Capitol Hill, talking with Republican congressmen, and he's saying that he has support from Republican congressmen to bomb the remaining food stop piles in Gaza to increase the pressure on Hamas. And so, you know,

as much as is Smoltrich, it's not just him. There are several in the amenities by Netanyahu administration now, who are openly calling for the genocide and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. The new Israeli defense minister, Israel Cats, actually establish an office for the voluntary emigration or, you know, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. They have an office in their defense ministry for finding other countries to take in the Palestinians, for once they make this so insufferable for them that they have to leave. And Israel is just preparing for a new major military offensive in Gaza, apparently. They are sending out tens of thousands of mobilization letters to Israeli reservists.

And I guess the plan is for them to now evacuate the Mwasi area, which is where they've tried to force all the Palestinians that they've kicked out of Rafa, the North, Gaza City, Kan Yunis. And so now they're going to try to remove them to an even more remote area of Gaza. And it's clear, Scott, that this is, you know, just about ethnic cleansing. I'm sure they're not going to let the Palestinians take their tents. You know, they're probably going to get out there with the bat pats. The men will be separated.

They'll be taken at best to a torture prison, if not just wherever the Israelis are going to kill them. You know, complete dehumanization and humiliation, stripping them naked, forcing them to march in front of taints through the rebels of their old homes and communities. That's what the Israelis are prepared. right now, ramping up right now to do in Gaza. Yeah. Well, and you know what? Speaking of these bogus Israeli cliches is the excuse that Hamas is just hiding behind human shields. So what's the truth of that? Well, Hamas is still in their tunnel networks. I guess 75% the tunnel networks are still intact

by estimation of the Israelis. They have 40,000 fighters still. So, you know, the Israelis, I guess, are saying that right now the Hamas fighters are, essentially choosing not to fight them very much. And I guess they're waiting until there's more Israeli forces that they could pick off rather than the Israeli bombing campaign in more limited operations right now. And then so there have been some reports in the Israeli media based on just soldiers coming forward and including, I believe, officers coming forward and talking about how they used Palestinians as human shields and their operations in the Gaza Strip.

Can you tell us about that stuff? yeah again we've had reports about this for i would say since maybe even eight months now a soldier's just openly coming out and saying that this is the policy of course with everyone these stories you get more details like you know this time we i think the latest from herettes said that one the soldiers actually went to the officer and was saying you know we shouldn't be doing this and the officer said this is the policy they would call mosquito policy or something like that young men like 13, 14 year old boys forced to go through homes. Apparently the Israelis now have this policy where I don't know if it's true that they're actually

strapping bombs to these people, but they're at least telling the Palestinians that they're strapping bombs to them and then forcing them to walk through these houses, you know, basically implying if you stray too far away, you're going to get shot. And they've also dressed these human shields in Israeli. fatigued. And that's had the, I guess, effect of if they're walking in front of the Israeli soldiers and Hamas fighters are there and they fire on the first people and Israeli fatides that they see, the Hamas fighters will actually kill the Palestinian and not the Israelis behind them. And so that's just another really, really just disgusting thing to do. And again, yeah,

this has been widespread. I think a soldier in Herod said that every unit in Gaza has one. And just in one particularly horrific story, Scott, David DeCamp wrote this up for anti-war.com. There was an 80-year-old man, I think it was in Gaza City, who was unable to evacuate, right? You know, the streets are bombed out. He would need an ambulance or something to come, load him and his wife up and take him to wherever they need to go. So they're still in their house when the Israeli soldiers get there. So the Israelis strap a bomb on this man who walks around with the cane, and they force him to spend eight hours going through the rubble, searching for

and making sure homes are cleared of IEDs. And then they tell this man and his wife walk in that direction. Well, they don't tell the Israeli battalion in that direction that they did that. And so once they come close to the Israeli soldiers, they shoot them dead, both the husband and wife. That's that. Man, it's completely crazy. It is, you know, direct comparisons to the Nazi villains of World War II are so obvious. And you're supposed to never be able to make that comparison because it's, you know,

Jewish Israelis doing it, but they're clearly just mimicking their previous persecutors and somehow are so lost in the narrative of themselves as the victims of World War II that, what everybody can see but them, that they're acting exactly like Adolf Hitler's minions. And then, you know, even the Times of Israel published a piece about how we need that Lebbins realm. Like, was this a German Jew that wrote that article or I don't know why they had to use that phrase the German word for it of living space

and it was not some Jonathan Swift satire at all either it was like look we got to kill these people so we can steal their property and make our country bigger that's all and they even called it Leibbons realm and then they just got to torture and murder all these people to death in order to make it happen

and so they're perfectly fine doing it any cruelty it's like the Japanese where like any any uh unwillingness to commit the worst cruelty is seen as treason and and you know the worst betrayal of the society you know and world war two like just insane cult of military power um against the most helpless victims you know it is it's just shooting fish in a barrel you know it's insane it's insane making old men clear houses for mines on you know people trapped in a tent city is just one of the worst things that you could have met and the the photos coming out day after day

amnesty international recently called it a live stream genocide and that certainly you know what it seems like how many thousands tens of thousands of these Palestinian victims have had their deaths documented almost in real time right journalists have filmed their own deaths people have filmed their own debts or the deaths of dozens of people right in front of them well I mean if you just think about

what if any government that right now is out of favor with our government or in the recent past we'd have done the same thing so you think about Slobodan Milosevic and his allied Bosnian Serbs and their war against the Muslims

in Bosnia or in Kosovo or think about the Taliban or Saddam Hussein or the Iranian Ayatollah or Bashar al-Assad. Anybody out of favor with the United States doing anything in comparison

to this. And the only question would be how come Barack Obama has only dropped every bomb in our inventory on them to the point that we ran out and not more than that yet. Which is, you know, the history of our whole lives here, man. Is, oh my God, look, someone

committing horrific acts of violence. against helpless civilians, that's our excuse to launch a war. And they'll embellish them out a whole cloth too. They'll take 3,000 dead in Kosovo and make it 100,000 so they can launch a war there. And here we've got to be near 100,000 dead civilians in Gaza this whole time. Yeah, there's a doctor who has been to Gaza several times and him with a group of, I believe, a hundred other doctors put together an estimate in October that was 118,000. They kind of take the 60,000 that have been killed that we know of from the war in understanding in modern warfare.

The number of indirect deaths is often at least two times higher, but I think four and five times higher is the average. You know, that's over 100,000. I don't think would be out of line to say at all. And then, of course, consider how many people are still buried dead beneath the rubble that we simply don't know about having been counted. yet i mean i i'm sure the numbers are horrifically high yeah and whose bones will just be mixed in with the crushed concrete forever you know under israeli or whoever's bulldozers that come scrape it all up and it'll never you know be identified um right that was a part of the point people are making when the u.s did that little peer project i don't know if you remember it'll be

a small footnote of the israeli genocide in gaza but that joe biden was going to resurrect this aid pier off the coast of Gaza because for some reason, we couldn't get through any of the two dozen some odd land crossings across the strip. And so they built this pier. And one of the things people point out was they cleared a bunch of rubble away. And people were saying, hey, I think my family might be under there. Yeah. And then the pier was a joke and got washed away in a week and whatever. Yep. And of course, yeah, he's the president of the United States. He can't just strong arm his way to open up a crossing to bring in trucks full of wheat, whatever they need. It's such a disgrace. So, and this is the most important question is what about Donald

Joe Biden, Trump? And what's he doing about it? Nothing helping? Yeah. I mean, it seems that the Trump administration's biggest focus when it comes to this is threatening Ansarala or the Houthis in Yemen and then blaming Iran and threatening to Bram Iran for backing Ansarala. So this is kind of their big focus right now in the Middle East is bombing Yemen. And are they still giving direct cash and weapons shipments to Israel, too? Yes, yes. Trump has approved, I think, $12 billion in weapons sales to Israel since he took office, including thousands and thousands of 2,000-pound bunker-busting bombs.

They sent them nine plane loads full. I have no idea how many of these things are in a plane load, but nine plane loads full of them and also another battery of that interceptors. So I think Israel has a total of about a third of the THAAD interceptors that exist in the world are now deployed to Israel. We have two aircraft carrier strike groups in the Middle East, so major troop deployments as well as B-2s and Diego Garcia. So we're doing a lot, not just for Israel and shipping them weapons, but also deploying more military assets to the Middle East, I think, you know, to bomb Yemen and then to threaten and intimidate Iran. Yeah. Well, and they also was $60 million for that lost

F-18 that fell off the aircraft carrier in trying to engage in an invasive maneuver to dodge fire from the Houthis. You think about how many people work their whole lives

just to pay the smallest fraction of the cost of that jet and all the money that it's taken to operate the thing and get it out there just to have it become a fish tank fall off that damn shit

people with their whole lives pay a third of their income their whole lives just to have it pissed away like it's nothing by the U.S. national government on fighting a war for another foreign country and who's the empire and who's the client

state here anyway shouldn't Donald Trump be sitting on some throne ordering Israel into battle against the Houthis on our behalf instead of Netanyahu bossing him around Doesn't that seem funny to anyone That that's the way the empire operates The Israelis stay home

And we take care of Saddam and Assad And whatever his first name is All Houthi down there for him You know Ayatollah potentially Well I mean that's one of the The first observation Scott And then another one is

If we're losing F18s fighting the Houthis they want to go to war with Iran. It just, it seems insanely stupid. I mean, they're preparing for a war with China, right? If you can't just demolish the, the Houthi's military infrastructure, if you can't identify it and take it out very quickly and rapidly and you're losing drones and F-18s against Ansarala, how are you ever going to pick a fight with Beijing? It just seems like this should be the biggest red flag in the Pentagon.

all the generals should be absolutely crapping their pants and like raising, like, what are we going to do if we can't take on the one of the poorest countries in the Middle East that has been under an airworn blockade for the better part of the past decade that isn't recognized by any of its neighboring states, get some minor support from Iran, but that's it. If we can't take out Ansar Allah, what are we doing even wargaming, even dreaming, even dreaming, about taking on Iran or China. Yep. Well, and yeah, I saw the Secretary of Defense and his threats against the Iranians. And he gets to talk tough on Twitter. But then, Kyle, remind me, ain't we in the middle of negotiating with Iran right now? I do believe those thoughts are on hold now.

I think they've been derailed in the past couple of days. Not because of anything that Secretary Hexeth said. I think it was Trump's threatening secondary sanctions that was probably the bigger deal. I guess if I were the Iranians, I wouldn't pay too much attention to headset. I would just keep an eye on Trump's true social account. I think that's where you get most of your information on foreign policy. But I'm sure headsets threats are not helpful to negotiations. And the Iranians have made clear that they don't want this to be viewed as them coming to the table on their knees

and that the Americans are in some great position of strength. And so they're trying to make it out to be that they're not coming at the result of the threats from the Trump administration against them. And so, you know, headsets from March certainly would force them or would make them want to pull back. Yeah. Hey, y'all, I've been working on the audiobook of my new book, Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. I've now finished and posted part three of the audio book to my substack and Patreon. at Scott Horton Show.com and Patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show. So that finishes all of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

I know there's still a long way to go, but just these first two chapters are almost 10 hours of audio to get you started. I promise I'm doing the rest as fast as I can. Get the audiobook of Provoked first. Subscribe at Scott Horton Show.com or patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show. Hey, y'all, here's how you can support those who support this show. and stay awake while you're doing things. Moondose Artisan Coffees. Moondoseartisan coffees.com

Get it, Starbucks supports the war party. Moondos is with us. And it's really good. Get to Scott Horton's show blend. Just click the link in the right-hand margin at Scott Horton.org. Hey, guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety.

I don't have a deal with them. But the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug of salt or anything else you buy from Amazon.com by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at Scott Horton.org. So keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess. Your wife will clean it up. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen. All of them. But now you can get the e-book, All the War Lies, by me, for free. Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org, or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. All right, well, I guess I need to ask, I don't want to go off too far on Iran. on. Let's go back to Gaza and the potential for any sort of new ceasefire, secondary arrangements,

negotiations, any kind of thing, or this is just purely starvation and bombing campaign until they're all cleansed out to Egypt or go lay down dead in the Sinai or what? Unfortunately, it seems that's the policy here. Scott, Hamas has offered a few times since Israel, broke the ceasefire that they would release all the Israeli hostages in exchange for a permanent end to the Israeli military occupation and assault on Gaza, which I don't know why they would assume that Israel would abide by that, but maybe they feel like that's the best they could hope for is just even some minor reprieve from the fighting and the onslaught. But even then, one thing that I think Trump has correctly observed about Gaza is

it's been destroyed. There's unexploded munitions everywhere. And so not only is this going to make Gaza at least borderline uninhabitable for the civilians that want to remain there, it's also going to be a massive

stoppile for Hamas or whatever Nets, Palestinian militant group exists to draw from. When Israel invaded Gaza, you know, we often heard, oh, all of the bombs are coming under the Egyptian border. It's all coming from Iran. It's Iranian support. I think it was

like three or four months into the war. There's a big report at the Wall Street Journal that said Israel found 80% of the munitions that Gaza or Hamasso's firing at Israel were salvaged from Israeli bombs and munitions that were duds. And so now, I mean, the strip is literally. That's how many bombs they've dropped that whatever small percent are duds are enough to be the entire arsenal of their enemy. Sorry, go ahead. Right. But just imagine how much larger that arsenal is going to be in the future, how much bigger the warheads could be on Hamas rockets if Israel leaves. That's why one of the reasons why I think Israel can't leave. And then again, 70% of Hamas's tunnel network is still intact, 40,000 fighters. I mean, if Israel left right now, I think they would view themselves as having a

major security threat potential from Gaza. I think in some respects, you know, that would be true. Well, Kyle, am I right to see it like that the Israelis violation of the ceasefire and relaunching of the war is essentially their answer to the Arab states plan, the Egyptians and the Saudis and the Qataris plan that they would take over the strip, at least temporarily to clean it up and rebuild it for the Palestinians. And this is the Israeli saying no. anybody's rebuilding it for anybody it's for us so my understanding is that the timing of that was

kind of two-part that israel and netting yahoo never intended to allow the ceasefire deal to get into its second phase which would require more Israeli troops leaving Gaza more aid entering Gaza the rebuilding of Gaza starting also in that second phase you would have had the American Israeli captive who was alive at the time Edon Alexander released which as the Times of Israel pointed out Israel doesn't want

because that might make Donald Trump a little bit less interested in supporting Israel and giving them all these weapons and money to fight in Gaza if there's no Americans held captive by Hamas and so they were blatant about that now you talk too fast even for me sometimes

this is such an important point to emphasize slow down here now we had a ceasefire that had been negotiated by Donald Trump's guy before he was even sworn in basically it's the same old deal but he was the one who got to implement it right Whitkoff did between Israel and Hamas then Trump is sworn in and there's a lull in the fighting now aid is getting in people are less going hungry to death and um and then uh we already know the story we've talked about this on the show but this really needs to get if nothing nothing else drilled into my head. So I remember the anecdote well. So I can explain it well later

because it's so crucial. It's not Wittkoff, but it's this other guy. What's his name? You remember Adam Boller? Adam Boller. And Adam Boller is the special envoy to what now? I think he was supposed for like hostage negotiations. He was a friend of Jared Kushner's apparently. And he's working with Whitkoff here or under Wittkoff. Is that correct? He's working for Trump. He's an envoy. So I'm not sure if he's, you know, particularly Wyckoff's guy or if he's kind of... My understanding is he'll's Kushner's guy. Okay. So,

and then, but Kushner's not in the White House right now directly. Just he was, he recommended him to Trump, but he's working probably directly for Trump here. So then, so now he's working on a deal with Hamas in Qatar that says what now?

So this, Israel has broken the ceasefire, Scott, which had they just followed the ceasefire, of course, Edon Alexander would have been released but they break the ceasefire and Adam Buller goes to Qatar engages directly with Hamas and tries to get the one living

Okay so this is after the breaking of a ceasefire. Okay, thank you for clarifying that for me. Go ahead. Yes. Yes. This was like an addendum a side agreement that he was trying to work on to get just this one specific hostage released. Israel has

already reimposed a full blockade on Gaza. I'm not sure if they're like all the way scaled up on the bombing campaign the way they are today. You know, that happened a little bit later in March. But Israel's broken the ceasefire. Hamas is still trying to get the ceasefire extended. And so it seemed like basically the outlines of the deal were going to be they released bowler or not bowler,

Boler negotiated. They were going to release Alexander. And then the bodies of, I believe, four other Israeli Americans who are taken hostage by Hamas and had since been killed in Gaza. and in exchange there's going to be another like sit sweet ceasefire or so and by killed you mean Hamas had executed them in the tunnels unclear we there's certainly been confirmed that Hamas has killed and executed some of these hostages particularly there is one case I believe it was in

Rafah Israelis were carrying out a ground raid and were very close to the hostages and so the Hamas fires executed them and this of course followed Israel carrying out a ground right in Gaza City to free some hostages in which they just started bombing a civilian marketplace and killed, I think, close to 200 Palestinians. And so I guess Hamas basically sent the signal to Israel, we will kill them before we let you rescue them. You have to negotiate the release. But also, it's been confirmed that Israel used 2,000-pound bunker-busting bombs and multiple in the same area, understanding that this would cause a chemical reaction

and would suck all the air out of the underground tunnels. And at least some Israeli captives were killed that way. There was one Israeli mother who was particularly upset and said that the Israeli government had gassed her child. And I was very skeptical of that claim. I mean, you're telling me that the Israeli government gassed it, but that does seem to have happened in Gaza, at least on this one occasion. So who knows who killed the rest of these hostages?

My guess is nobody has ever, you know, one side's Hamas, one side's Israel, and nobody's ever going to really know the truth. Yeah. Well, whatever. I mean, they're under Hamas captivity, so it really is on them, even if the Israelis wantonly bomb them. But it's also on the Israelis, too, depending on the degree of wantonness in their bombing. but like you're saying

they know what they're doing and that's one of the headlines on the page today is Netanyahu is clear that rescuing the hostage is one of the goals but it's not the overriding you know mission

at all it's defeating the enemy which they're clearly not doing because their intelligence agencies say they still have 20,000 fighters or maybe maybe they lost 10 and got another 10

but whatever they were right back where they were they haven't really lost anything A group of Israeli ministers said it was 40,000. Okay. They were opposition, so maybe they were fluffing the number up a little bit to make Netanyahu look worse.

But even Anthony Blinken said they had, when he was still Secretary of State, said they had gotten, recruited as many as they had lost. Well, I mentioned the number 20,000 in my argument with the not really a debate, but somewhat debate with the former head of Mossad, Danny Atom on the Pierce Morgan show. He didn't dispute that. And in fact, he had been somewhat less worse on this in that he had come out a year ago saying we should negotiate an end. We're not getting anywhere with this. He is, after all, he had been Ehud Barak's guy, which makes him slightly less worse than Dilakud on this stuff.

I guess. Well, I think he's a big advocate of kind of where we were going down this trap, Scott, which was all the hostages could have been. been released, right, and that the goal should be to free the hostages. And it's clear that Netanyahu is taking steps not to do that. Yeah, so now, so back to Andy Bowler, you say? Yeah. So then he went on Jake Tapper and really stuck his foot in his mouth, right? When he should have just said, don't worry, Jake, we're going to take care of it as

best we can, baby boy. Instead, he said, hey, America hereby declares independence from Israel and you can't tell me what to do or something that they heard that I'm embellishing a bit. He said that you could negotiate with Hamas. You know, he said that Hamas. He said America reserves the right to negotiate with whoever they want and Israel can't stop them. No, I think he actually said that the Hamas officials he met with were reasonable people who could be talked to, which is the whole reason that Hamas, Netanyahu has propped up Hamas as you and Connor Freeman's playing that great article in the first place.

the whole point of Hamas is so Israel has somebody to point at and say we got nobody to talk to, we got nobody negotiate with. And so I think in a lot of ways he really broke one of the key narratives by saying that. So what happened to him, again, this is

remember, this is a guy who works for Donald Trump, the head of the world empire in Washington, D.C. The Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister, Ron Dermar, one of the closest Israeli aides to Benjamin Netanyahu called Boler and read Boler the riot at, right?

Again, the Israeli official called the American official to yell and complain about him talking to Hamas about trying to set up a deal to get an American freed from Israel. Now, Bowler's response to this was he couldn't believe the insolence that an Israeli official would do this. But guess who lost their job, Adam Bowler? Dermar is still in the Strategic Affairs Ministry. Yeah, word to the wise, man. You know, our friend Daniel Davis could be the deputy director of national intelligence right now,

except that he said a couple of sensible things about Israel. And purely sensible, I mean, he's no ideologue the way we are. We just love him for what a great military analyst he is and what an honest guy he is and everything. But he never went on a moral crusade against Israel in any sense, man. just said boy this america might consider distancing ourselves from this policy which is so destructive and might blow back on us you know like an adult might say um and that cost him he could you know he's still our best youtube star but he is uh not the deputy director of national intelligence right now although that really speaks very well of tulsie gabbert that that's who

she wanted that's whose judgment she was trusting at that time that's great but And I believe Will Ruger is in that spot now, who isn't a bad choice either. Oh, yeah, that's good. Yeah, he's not that bad. Um, all right. Well, damn. Uh, I don't know what else to say. That ain't too redundant.

Just that I guess let's just go over the fact that like still every day and night, the Israelis are dropping bombs on these people's heads and blowing them apart, right? This is. Yeah. There was a ceasefire, but it is over. And so the media coverage has kind of died down. Maybe the leftist rent-a-mob protests or wherever they came from have somewhat receded. But the violence is ongoing as bad as ever.

Yeah. I mean, Dave DeCamp at anti-war.com every day, you know, Sunday through Thursday night, writes up a story. The guys, the health ministry confirms its number of Palestinians killed. it's you know usually somewhere i guess between 30 and 100 and of course they only count the people who are brought to the mords and to the hospitals it doesn't count the people who are dead buried beneath the rubber rubble are just absolutely obliterated off the face of the earth uh you know burned beyond recognition beyond finding human remains in one of these tents as many Palestinians have been at this point So it's really bad.

I guess the number of journalists who have been killed seems to be on the rise too, which means that I feel like it's harder to get information and video and things like that out of Gaza. I mean, people are still taking pictures and posting videos. But just this about two weeks ago, they killed a female Palestinian photojournalist who was going to be featured in the Canes Film Festival, which I guess. is a pretty big deal in France and so again just the number of journalists being killed made it so hard to actually know how many Palestinians are dying certainly scores of them every single day yeah and there's been so many cases too where they kill not just the journalist but their

whole family and sometimes just the whole family while the journalist is out journaling and they blow up his wife and babies while he's gone just sick all right okay i'll let you go thank you man appreciate your advice and uh what is it uh not advice really so much as uh advisement on these issues uh yeah really appreciate you man as always thanks very i miss got all right you guys that is the great kyle an zelone he is of course our news editor at the institute libertarian institute dot org and he's the opinion editor at antivore dot com antiwar dot com and he's got two great podcasts the kyle Anzalone show and Conflicts of Interest, which are, of course, on YouTube and all your favorite

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